Greed and hypocrisy in a land of plenty

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Jan, 1998 by Wayne M. Barrett

New Year. Clean slate. A fresh start. No baggage. Sorry, not this century.

The calendar may have turned a page, but the athletic arena hasn't. Although the sports world remains an ever-growing land of plenty with more than enough spoils for everyone, the industry still insists on doing anything and everything to bleed the last possible penny from its misguided supporters.

Let's be clear. This isn't that stale, over-simplified argument about how the players' bloated salaries drive up ticket prices. That old saw is as passe as getting stock quotes off a ticker tape. No, this concerns certain all-too-common practices which, although certainly shameful, are, more disturbingly, disheartening. It's a wonder we have the stomach to turn to the sports page each day for our daily dose of disdain.

New York's Madison Square Garden has removed many of its water fountains. Need a drink? Try the bottled water that wouldn't fill an eyedropper for $3.50.

The National Basketball Association has been sponsoring a "Stay in School" campaign for years. So why does the league draft sophomores and juniors from college, promising these kids guaranteed fame and fortune?

Major league baseball flouts a century of tradition with interleague games, realignment, expanded playoffs, a world champion wild-card team, and World Series games played in a snowstorm -- at night!

New National Hockey League arenas have seamless glass with no support bars. This provides a better view in the $100 scats, but the formerly flexible boards have no give, thus leaving unconscious players scattered like ice cubes on a freshly waxed floor. A record number of concussions are costing once healthy young men their careers and their senses.

The National Football League seemingly has outlawed good clean tackling. Steroid-crazed lunatics in pads can't wait to go helmet-to-helmet, turning themselves into human spears. Old-time gridders used to retire with a sore-kneed limp. Today, athletes in their prime leave the sport on stretchers, with a lifetime of dizziness and headaches as their pension. Nothing sells better than violence, except, of course, excessive violence.

Florida Marlin right fielder Gary Sheffield loses a $2,000 earring during the pennant celebration. No problem, he shrugs. In the ensuing World Series, he wears a bigger and shinier-rock. Great PR move -- the common man really relates to that.

In that same Series, viewers are told a tale of woe about how rookie Marlin pitcher Livan Hernandez defected from Cuba and that his mother is still there, unable to watch her son on TV or even listen on the communist-controlled radio waves. Then the camera pans to Hernandez, a gold necklace as thick as a tube of toothpaste around his neck and a diamond earring the size of a quarter attached to his lobe. Here's a refugee who's going to gamer a lot of sympathy.

A Texas Christian University college football player is paralyzed in a game, the school and the state joining in cahoots to deny him workman's compensation benefits. In fact, the NCAA, which reaps billions from the efforts of "student-athletes," somehow maintains its status as a nonprofit organization (with all the accompanying tax loopholes). Yet, the NCAA doesn't adequately insure its athletes, discarding most of them with a third-rate education (and no diploma) after four years. Higher learning indeed.

The American Basketball League is born, a top-rated women's professional circuit. The media gives it limited coverage. A few months later, the WNBA makes its debut. The quality of play is spotty, but the hype and nightly highlights are endless. The latter league is associated with the National Basketball Association, which was due for a new multi-billion-dollar TV contract. The networks, hoping to cozy up to the NBA, gave the ladies plenty of attention, figuring to grab the inside track on rights negotiations.

Wayne Huizenga, owner of the world champion Florida Marlins and Stanley Cup finalist Florida Panthers, demands a new hockey rink for his expansion franchise. When the state is slow to secure the necessary funding, Huizenga not only threatens to sell the team, but to peddle the club to an out-of-stater who will move it somewhere across the country. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, who pushed hockey into the marketplace south of the Mason-Dixon line, steps in and wisely muzzles the showboating owner.

Huizenga does produce winning teams, though. Through savvy trades and free-agent signings, he transformed the Marlins from expansion wannabes into World Series titlists in just five years, topping the 1969 "Miracle" Mets' record by two seasons. But no sooner had the trophy been hoisted than the penurious owner, claiming losses in the millions, been a fire sale, unloading his highest-salaried players. Huizenga, however, isn't alone when it comes to desecrating accomplishment. Hours after he was named American League Manager of the Year, Davey Johnson was pressured into resigning by Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos. Meanwhile, Montreal pitcher Pedro Martinez will get a big raise for winning the 1997 National League Cy Young award, only it won't be from the Expos. Montreal management, the masters of cutting comers, traded him to the Boston Red Sox for a couple of low-paid prospects in order to save a bundle.